"Game of Thrones" Season 8 premiere Sunday drew a massive 17.4 million viewers, according to HBO, beating out the show's previous record of 16.9 million viewers for the show's final episode of its seventh season.
Why it matters: One of the last remaining shows that kept appointment TV viewing culture alive is nearing its end.
At first glance, the ad tech industry looks like it's doing fairly well. Most stocks for major publicly-traded firms — along with related marketing tech and data broker firms — experienced gains in the first quarter of this year.
Reality check: The recent collapse of Sizmek, one of the biggest demand-side ad platforms, suggests that the positive momentum behind these companies could be inflated, and that the big money bubble that's floated dozens of hot ad tech companies over the past few years is about to burst.
Democratic 2020 frontrunner Bernie Sanders defended being a millionaire, called for immigration reform, criticized President Trump and won applause for his "Medicare for All" plan at a Fox Newstown hall Monday.
Details: Moderator Bret Baier asked the Vermont senator if the 180 million people on private insurance would lose it under Sanders' proposal. Sanders said millions of Americans lost health insurance every year, perhaps because their employer changed insurers, whereas his plan would provide stability, prompting cheers from the crowd.
Swelling nationalism and religious tensions are coloring two of the world’s largest democratic exercises, in India and Indonesia, thanks in part to incendiary misinformation proliferating on social media.
The big picture: Both countries have among the largest populations of social media users on the planet, and cheap smartphones mean more people are being connected every day. The propaganda and fearmongering we’re seeing isn’t new, but powerful tools are spreading it farther and more rapidly than ever before.
AT&T has sold its minority stake in Hulu back to the streaming video joint venture, which includes Disney and Comcast Corporation. The transaction valued Hulu at $15 billion, with AT&T’s 9.5% interest valued at $1.43 billion.
Why it matters: The sale gives Disney a 66% stake in the streaming company and 33% to Comcast/NBCUniversal. The transaction helps AT&T pay down its debt and helps Disney bolster its streaming offerings.
The 2019 Pulitzer Prize winners were announced Monday.
The big winner: Local news outlets swept the major awards categories, winning the top prizes in public service, breaking news and investigative reporting.
French ad giant Publicis announced Sunday it will acquire Epsilon, the data marketing arm of Alliance Data Systems Corporation, for a net price of $3.95 billion, and at a total cash consideration of $4.4 billion after a tax step-up.
Why it matters: It's one of the biggest agency acquisitions in years. It gives Publicis access to the information of 250 million people (per Epsilon's estimates) that it can use to build better ad-targeting strategies in-house.
Johnson & Johnson and UnitedHealth Group are lighting the Q1 earnings torch this week, per usual, but Wall Street investors are uneasy about the industry’s forecast even though companies are still immensely profitable right now.
Driving the news: Medicare for All legislation, the Trump administration’s drug rebate regulation and another legal battle over the Affordable Care Act have created volatility with health care stocks, which have traded below the broader market.
